The Heart is Katmandu [Paperback]

Yoel Hoffmann (Author), Peter Cole (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2006

The Heart Is Katmandu tells a tale of new love—of paradise gained.

Set in today's Haifa and presented in 237 dream-like small chapters, it is a book in which shyness and stumbling tenderness emerge triumphant. Poet Peter Cole has made a beautiful translation, capturing Hoffmann's intense and unfathomably original style. A starred Kirkus Review acclaimed the novel "Beautiful, humane, priceless."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sensual details of everyday life are magnified and distorted in Yoel Hoffmann's uncommon romance, The Heart Is Katmandu, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. Yehoahim and Batya come together in modern-day Haifa; each has an uncertain past that includes lost love. We are given a glimpse into their minds, where ordinary words and objects become totems, religion and art serve as touchstones, and meaning is as ephemeral as love itself. Less a novel than a loosely woven series of impressionistic prose poems, this will enchant and baffle discriminating readers. ( Apr. 23)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

A beautiful, but not naive, expression of the power of love over both the heart and mind. -- Jerusalem Post, Leslie Cohen, 20 July 2001

A reason to celebrate. -- Molly Abramowitz, Hadassah Magazine

Stunning...dreamlike and precise, [Hoffmann] wrenches your heart. -- The New Leader

[A]n extraordinary book, beautifully translated by Peter Cole. -- Hadassah Magazine, Joan Baum, December 2001

[C]onfirms that Hoffman is the most interesting and experimental novelist in Israel. -- Review of Contemporary Fiction, Irving Malin, Fall 2001

[N]ot just a simple love story. It is also about the beauty of the ordinary and the everyday. -- Jewish Exponent, 21 July 2001 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (November 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811216829
• ISBN-13: 978-0811216821
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,017,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a reluctant 5 but if you don't read Hoffman ..., May 19, 2002

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heart is Katmandu (Hardcover)

Thru the first fifth or so of these book, I thought I may have finally found a book by Yoel Hoffmann that I didn't love. Because of that, I would strongly urge anyone who has read nothing of Hoffmann's to begin with "Katschen & The Book of Joseph" rather than this book.

In the small units (chapters? prose poems? fragments?) that make up this book, Hoffman builds an understanding (an impression? an empathy?) for the experience of falling in love. This woman loves man loves woman loves child loves mother ... story builds within the individual characters, within the world, within the religious universe in unusual connections: "Now his life, too, seems like a story, except that here there occur the same eruptions that take place on the surface of the sun, and he hears the sound of this burning, like the song which is of this world alone: 'Frere Jacques.'"

While occasionally a line or image seems contrived in a way not evident in his other works, the results are astonishing. At the novel's end the reader has seen barriers and loneliness fall away and love flow in to replace them. This love is physical, sacred and profane as is the world within which the characters live limited (or not?) by time, space, contradition and naming.